36 FOR BETTER CROPS 



of farm management, and as far as their time permits are ready 

 to give advice. 



They need a specific, intelligent statement of the farmers' 

 problem and his point of view, that they may the better under- 

 stand how to investigate farm management in all its manifold 

 bearings. 



There have already begun to appear suggestions on farm reor- 

 ganization and management, from a number of men who ere 

 long will be regarded as masters along this line of scientific 

 instruction and advice. 



The experiment stations and the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture have begun to accumulate a valuable body of knowledge 

 along this line, and teachers are beginning to reduce to peda- 

 gogic form a system of teaching farm management to be com- 

 parable with teaching other lines of engineering and business 

 organization. 



The Various Soils Best Suited to Cereals — The cereals 

 are suited to a wide range of soils. On light sandy, leachy, or 

 drouthy soils these crops usually make a crop of good quality 

 but poor in quantity. 



The new durum wheat and kaffir corn are adapted to the 

 drouthy regions of the semi-arid plains; durums well to the 

 north, and kaffir from Nebraska southward in this "plains 

 region." 



There are few soils too heavy or wet for the small cereals, 

 and rice grows in soils kept flooded so much of the time that few 

 weeds can encumber the soil. 



Like most crops, these grains are best suited by soils which 

 are a happy medium in texture from being made up of coarse 

 and fine materials combined, as where the great glacier, crucible- 

 like, has left its mixture of sand and clay to the northward of 

 the Ohio and Missouri rivers. 



Soils Adaptable to the Cereal Crops — As was stated earlier, 

 these crops should follow corn, potatoes, or other hoed cropg, 

 and the grasses, as on sods of timothy, clover, or timothy and 

 clover sown together. 



The sod of the long-standing blue grass pasture, or of the 

 long-established alfalfa meadow also suits these crops; though 

 if the soil is naturally rich and the season unduly wet, these 

 crops are liable to overgrow in stems and leaves on rich land, and 

 falling down, or even continuing too late their mere vegetative 

 growth, make grain of poor quality and not large in quantity. 



Flax is less liable to be overfed, while the varieties of oats as 

 yet available for most localities are peculiarly liabla to lodge and 

 to be overdone with much plant food. 



Why the cereals do not yield nearly as well following cereals 

 as after alternating crops mentioned, is not fully understood. 



